Day: January 27, 2011

This time last week, we trailed our round-up of the ten worst football films ever made. We meant it. This evening, we kick-off with the first two, and first up is Nick Love’s re-make of the 1988 film, “The Firm”. Dipping one’s toe into the world of hoolie-porn can be a dispiriting business. Its emergence may or may not be related to the the onslaught of “laddism” in the early part of the last decade, but a couple of early examples of it, including the mildly unsettling (and only occasionally hilarious) 1995 BBC film ID, are reasonably watchable films. Since then, though, there has been a marked deterioration in their quality. The Firm makes it into our top ten, and it’s not the only hoolie-porn film to do so. Indeed, it’s not the worst in our list, but it’s pretty terrible, not least because it is a re-make of the other reasonably watchable film from the genre, Alan Clark’s 1988 film, umm, The Firm, and it palls in comparison with the film that it may or may not be a homage to. The Firm (1988) is a gritty, grainy story of internecine rivalries between West Ham United and Millwall hooligan firms that is as much a statement about the state of Britain in the late 1980s as it is about football or football hooliganism. It deals specifically with Bex,...

The snow at The Clackins Park Colosseum still stubbornly refuses to shift, and it’s attracted the attention of the authorities who are not happy in the least. But could the brutal, heinous sanction they are threatening really fit the crime? Dotmund has been sacked. Click for...